Tuesday, 12 June 2012

'This is how amoebas move'

A nice triad of commissions has come my way. At the moment I'm researching plankton for a piece of writing for Anne Bevan's upcoming exhibition 'Particle' (about foraminifera) in Shetland this August. (See her extraordinary form above. I'm so chuffed to be collaborating with her.) Some happy discoveries already: the Greek origin of 'plankton' means 'errant' or 'wandering.' If something is defined as 'planktonic' it means it is incapable of swimming against the current. And I found this very pleasing youtube of a questing foraminifer...

If you can't swim against the current you have to trust in where the current will carry you...

Homes from Home

Shetland Stuff

For the past eight years, Shetland has persistently influenced my poetry and visual art.Since my second book Nigh-No-Place, won the T.S.Eliot Award in 2008, I’ve worked primarily as a poet, creative writing tutor, and classroom assistant, but walking, and gathering wild food and materials for my visual art-works, are as important in my creative life as my language-based practice. My third poetry collection, Byssus, is out now.